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Tim Sanchez

Tim Sanchez

ABIS Consulting Group
Tim Sanchez is dedicated to promoting remarkable customer experiences through leadership and personal development.
  • 12 Reasons Bad Customer Service Isn’t Your Fault
    0 comments 881 reads
    Posted on 2011-12-08

    Even the best of us are capable of providing bad service at times. These excuses have rattled around in my head more one than once. What about you?

    1. It isn’t part of your job description.
    2. You’re overworked and underpaid.
    3. The customer is not always right.
    4. You had a terrible day and just need to be alone.
    5. You don’t have the right tools to deliver great service.
    6. Your customers just want a good deal, they don’t care about the experience.
    7. The customer is unreasonable and rude.
    8. Another department is responsible for what the customer wanted.
    9. Your company hasn’t made customer service a priority.
    10. Your bonus isn’t based on customer service, so why spend any time on it.
    11. The customer didn’t complain, so they must have been happy.
    12. You had too much to do and other people were waiting. You couldn’t spend all that time with just one customer.

    ...

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  • The Passion Derivative
    0 comments 1,039 reads
    Posted on 2011-08-22

    I’m willing to bet you aren’t designing the next big thing. Your company probably isn’t being raved about in the news. You might not even care about the product your company sells.

    How does that affect your passion in what you do?

    Most people’s passion is derived from working on something (or for someone) they’re passionate about. The only problem with that is you’ll always be let down. The product will eventually lose its flair. The company will hit hard times. The boss you’ve always looked up to will take another job.

    You’re guaranteed to end up disappointed when your passion is dependent upon the success or prestige of something else.

    Of course there’s an alternative: Shift your passion inward.

    Seth Godin once wrote,

    It’s more important that you be passionate about what you do all day than it is to be passionate about the product that...

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  • Sharing is Good Business
    0 comments 783 reads
    Posted on 2011-08-08

    Mark Hurst wrote a great post the other day about persuasion. Read it here and then come back.

    We’ve had a lot of success at ABIS by sharing the product development effort with our customers. We’re good at building software and our customers know their business and industry really well. By inviting them to share in the process it makes the resulting product better.

    Here’s the cool thing about sharing that I think Mark already knows:

    Invitations...

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  • Confused about Customer Experience
    0 comments 1,313 reads
    Posted on 2011-07-25

    Earlier this month, Zendesk released an infographic along with a post titled, “Customer Experience is More Important than Advertising.”

    Since when is advertising not a part of customer experience?

    It seems the Zendesk article was swapping out the terms customer service and customer experience and taking them to mean the same thing. While customer service is a big part of customer experience, the terms cannot be used synonymously.

    Advertising is a part of customer experience because it’s a...

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  • Focus, Focus, Focus
    0 comments 3,159 reads
    Posted on 2011-06-13

    I often refer back to Steven Covey’s Time Management Matrix when prioritizing my schedule. It helps me focus on the most important tasks, rather than what’s simply urgent (which is everything these days).

    Chris Brogan had a good post the other day about how to organize your business (or rather, how he organizes his business). This quote was particularly poignant for me:

    Email is a system that delivers other people’s priorities to your attention. It’s up to you to decide when that priority should be managed...

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  • Winning with Social CRM in B2B
    0 comments 2,494 reads
    Posted on 2011-03-22

    Much has been made of social media’s ability to directly connect businesses and their customers. I’m in the middle of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Thank You Economy (affiliate link), and it has me thinking more about social media’s impact on the future of business. Its influence is undeniable for many B2C comanies, where customers are online talking directly about the brand. But what about B2B companies, where online conversation is much less common?

    I work for an enterprise software company that serves small and medium sized businesses. We’re a small team that understands the importance of customer service and...

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  • How To Take Notes and Wow Customers a.k.a. Evernote and Livescribe Kick Ass
    2 comments 2,026 reads
    Posted on 2011-03-01

    Taking notes is a seemingly simple topic, and one that doesn’t necessarily fit the typical customer experience content published here. But, as I told the members of the VIP List a couple weeks ago, the tools (Evernote and Livescribe) and processes I’m using have helped me deliver better service with less effort, so I felt it might be able to help others as well. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions in the comments.

    The Pen is Mightier

    The majority...

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  • How To Make Millions Using Twitter
    2 comments 1,924 reads
    Posted on 2011-02-25

    No, this post isn’t about making money on Twitter. If you’re into that kind of thing, then I’m sorry, you’re in the wrong place. My bad.

    What’s interesting to me (and hopefully you) is why headlines like this work. If setting realistic expectations is so crucial to customer experience, then why are we continually hooked with this kind of bait? And, at what point do expectations cross the line from optimistic to misleading?

    Expectations and Customer Experience

    I won’t get much opposition by stating that setting realistic expectations plays a large part in creating a great customer experience. People don’t want to feel like they’ve been tricked or conned into something they don’t want. Over-promising and under-delivering is a surefire way...

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  • Customer Complaints, A Company’s Favorite Gift
    0 comments 2,385 reads
    Posted on 2011-01-20

    Why don’t you complain more? You really should.

    Good companies love hearing useful complaints from their customers.

    On peak days, Mindshare Technologies gathers over 90,000 customer feedback surveys from your favorite retail stores and restaurants.

    Each of these companies makes promises and sets expectations for customers through marketing, advertising, and previous experiences.  But, when these promises are broken, customers don’t return. They talk to their friends, and sometimes public relations nightmares ensue.

    When you complain about a less-than-satisfactory experience, you are offering the company valuable information that they can use to take action!

    The first and most important step that companies must take is to care for you, the customer.  Smart companies know that customers who have a...

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  • Nordstrom Nails Service Recovery
    0 comments 2,058 reads
    Posted on 2011-01-10

    It’s no secret that Nordstrom is known for remarkable customer service. That’s why I was so surprised to find such a poor user experience while using their live chat support last week.

    I wrote a quick post detailing the issue and received a response from Nordstrom via email the same day. I was pleased to receive an email from Nordstrom, but wasn’t too surprised after my experience with Gap had yielded similar results.

    Adam Seede, Contact Center Director for Nordstrom, got in touch with me and sent a great email that nipped this issue in the bud. I am republishing it here with his consent.

    Read More »
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